The Light At The End

This is a journey of our life and my struggle to be victorious in becoming fit and healthy, I want to share this as I go, share tips, and learn from others along the way! There is a Light at the End of the tunnel!!

Friday, June 29, 2012

So my final supplement arrived in the mail yesterday! I had been using them before, but having to share my bottle of Fat Fighters with my husband had us going through them rather quickly! I am so excited about these, Fat Fighters do just want they say, taken up to 60 minutes after a meal, and they block absorption of 28% of the fat, and 78% of the carbs you eat!
I am so excited to add those in along with exercise. Which by the way I started 2 days ago. I found someone in my area selling P90X, and made the commitment to start and finish! I keep forgetting to take a before picture of course, mostly because I need help taking since I don't want to be holding a camera in the pic. But I did take my measurements which I will post about tomorrow. I kind of want to measure once a week just to see when I can start to see inch loss.
There are 3 different ways you can do the P90X program. Classic, Doubles, and Lean. I chose the Lean since that is supposed to be the one that really focuses more on weight loss. Its split into 12 weeks I believe. Weeks 1-3 are the same. So Day 1, I did the Core Synergistics. Talk about HARD!! Its 63 min long and feels like an eternity. But I managed to get through it with only a few pauses. Now I didn't use weights with this one simply because mine are on a moving truck and won't be here until Monday. It was nice to learn the moves I think before adding the weights in. And I still feel like I got a great workout. Yesterday, Day 2: was Cardio X, which was exactly what it sounds like, pure cardio. It combines yoga, kenpo (a form of kickboxing) and plyometrics. So lots of jumping around. Today is Shoulders and Arms and Abs. Again, I will have to be weightless so maybe I will sub in some soup cans or something! I would really love to shrink my arms and have some tone and definition there. For as long as I can remember I have always hated my arms. And even when I was in the gym a lot, I always felt like they would just get too big. I can't wait to see if this will help lean them out! If not I can always wrap them I guess!!

Monday, June 25, 2012

For those of my friends who know me, I am a Coke Zero Addict, Vanilla Coke Zero to be exact. I love soda, I love the fizz, the taste, the caffeine, everything about it. I had given it up earlier this year when we went Vegetarian, to get rid of the artificial sweeteners, and the added chemicals. For about 3 months I did great! We were heading towards more organic, and hovering between Vegan and Vegetarian. Not because I love PETA (sorry PETA) but because I want to eat a more plant based diet, heart disease runs in our family so anything to help me avoid that in the future is good. The hubs and I also watched the documentary and learned so much. I have for years wanted to rid our diets of processed, and chemical filled food and watching that (you can find it streaming on netflix by the way!) really gave me the push I needed to make the change.
Unfortunately, life gets busy, and combining cramming 100 hours of school into 2.5 weeks, instead of a month and a half, with getting ready to move half way across the country, had me pushing healthy eating and exercise to the back burner. And my beloved Coke Zero made a comeback! I tried to justify once a week, thats not so bad, right? Well, that lead to me having 2-3 times a week and then back to every day. UGH! What happened to all my progress?!?
Now settled and able to focus a little more on me, and my health, I am giving it back up again. And honestly I think some of my supplements I am taking, is helping me with the cravings! The Its Vital formula is known to help with that. I have always been skeptical when someone says one vitamin or another is going to help me with this or that. I almost NEVER feel the difference. But giving up soda is another story. I do get the headaches and I am CRANKY. I had read a couple of weeks ago that the Its Vital has been so amazing when it comes to cravings,that distributors were selling them 1 pill for $1 on the streets to Heroin addicts to help them with detoxing and cutting the cravings. And you know what? I am not craving or suffering from a headache today, and today is Day 2, NO SODA!!
So working out today, since yesterday I walked several times, and managed to even jog a little, I thought I would work on some toning exercises. I found The Brazilian Butt Workout on Pinterest, (of course I did, who ISN'T on Pinterest?) and did that this morning. I was SWEATING by the time I was done, and I can feel it in my thighs and butt. http://thehautebunny.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/brazilian-butt-workout/ here it is if anyone is interested!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

I seem to be the QUEEN of starting a blog and then forgetting to post on it! The original purpose of this blog was to share our journey of becoming debt free. And while we are still not quite there, we are in a MUCH better place! I worked long and hard doing everything from Event Planning, to saving, cutting back, baking and doing craft fairs, we ALMOST opened a Bake shop, but had to change course once again in order to accommodate for my husband going to Iraq for 9 mos. From there, I went to and COMPLETED Cosmetology school, from which I started cutting and coloring hair from home for extra money. I have done fantastically at this, and was making quite a bit of extra money, which went towards paying down debt. One of the best things of going to school and I wish I had known this earlier was all the grants and GI Bill I received! That also went towards us paying down our debt. It is now a lot more manageable thanks to my attending school. And of course now that I have graduated, and am preparing to test for my license, I can either work from home, in a salon, or both. Two incomes would be amazing! Well, maybe I should say 3 incomes! The other thing I have begun doing is becoming a Distributor for It Works! This has been really exciting for us, I have a lot of friends who sell everything from Scentsy to Pampered Chef, and while I love the products I was never really passionate about them. Until I found It Works, I hadn't ever been an at home rep for a company before.
Thus bringing us to now, we have moved TWICE since I started this, from Florida, to Illinois, to our current residence of Chesapeake Virginia!
As I mentioned before, I am an It Works Distributor. What is that you say? Or maybe you have heard of them and haven't tried any of our products yet? Anyways, we are a company that basically promotes healthy living. Anyway, I am and have been for quite a while it seems, on a weight loss journey. Fits with the title don't you think? I am beginning a program of the supplements my company offers and I want to document each one I am taking and how they work, how they make me feel, and best of all how they are helping the WEIGHT COME OFF!!
I started last night, with the Regular. I am sure you can all imagine what that entails... But the purpose of this particular supplement is to help you have a continual on going SLOW colon cleanse of sorts. We can store 8-10 meals in our intestines on a daily basis and this makes me for one, feel bloated and gross, and I am sure it doesn't help my waist line at all! Now you are supposed to take 2 before bed, I have to admit I was a little nervous, but I forged ahead and so far so good! I don't feel an urgent need to relieve myself, but then its my first day on them!
Now there are several you can take in conjunction with each other, but for now I am taking 3 supplements, since I am waiting for the rest to ship to me.
Next on my list is the Its Vital. Vitamins! These are great, whole food vitamins, with 74 essential vitamins and minerals. I will post a pic later of them, as well as post pics of a test I do at parties showing how quickly they dissolve in comparison to the vitamins you can get at the health food store. Anyway, 2 of these in the morning, and I have an amazing BOOST for the day! Loads of energy in these babies.
And finally, Thermofit! These are and have been my favorite for a while. The name kind of says what they are, a Thermogenic! Another whole food supplement, with Capsaicin and Raspberry Ketones (I think! I will double check later) all the things the great and powerful Oz tells us are great for weight loss. They allow you to burn an extra 300 calories a day. So I started this morning, with 2 before breakfast, 2 before lunch, and I will take 1 more before dinner here in a bit. I have taken them in the past, but I am SO terrible about taking supplements on a daily schedule, I am kind of hoping you all will keep me on track. I do know that when I took them on vacation, along with the Fat Fighters, which I won't get into now, because I don't have them to take yet, anyways, I ate terribly, didn't get a lot in the way of exercise, and STILL managed to LOSE 3lbs!!
My goal is 30-40lbs, I will document as I go, show you what I am taking, and talk about what workout I am doing. As soon as my scale gets here, (its on a moving truck!) I will do the dreaded weigh in and share that with you all so you can follow my journey!
I love comments, and encouragement so please do both :) No judging and no meanies allowed...